January 30, 2014

Mavs know the "blow-bys'' must stop

DALLAS -- Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said his "blow-by'' comment about his team's poor defense Wednesday night against Houston was not anything calculated and that he wasn't trying to send a message to his team.

"It's pretty clear -- they know the deal,'' Carlisle said after Thursday's practice. "They know we were poor (defensively).

"We've got to do better. I take responsibility because it's my team.''

Following the 117-115 loss to the Rockets, Carlisle talked about how he decided to intentionally foul Dwight Howard in the fourth quarter because Houston was getting too many uncontested layups.

“I don’t know how many times they blew by us, but I’m glad we started fouling Howard because I was starting to get the chills over there from all the blow-bys,’’ Carlisle said. “It saved our guys the embarrassment of getting blown by two or three times in a row.’’

Carlisle admits its his job to get the Mavs playing better defense.

"The ability levels of all of our guys are different athletically, but positioning plays a big part and the strategy when you close out to a particular guy plays a part too,'' Carlisle said. "So we’ve got to know tendencies, we'v got to be in a stance, we've got to make sure we’re in a solid stance and not a stance where we’re jumping up and down that we can get beat when we’re on an uptick instead of a downtick.

"There's a lot of things to consider. Mostly as a team we've got to show help better.''